5 creative ways to get staff engaged with policies or procedures

Competition

Turn your new policies or procedures into a competition to make your staff feel more competitive about ensuring they adhere to them. For example, you may have a new policy around lateness. You could keep a tally which recorded individuals who showed up late and those which were always on time, you could hand out prizes or punishments accordingly.

Gamification

Rather than making staff read and memorise a long word document. Get them to learn the fun way by gamifying questions about your policies or procedures. Virgin Media did this with Albert their e-learning hero built by Oplift, his games include Whack-a-mole, Catapult Castle, Albert’s lab, and his very own Buzz Quiz Show. They saw an increase of 7.4% in knowledge ratings from customers, along with an increase of 13% in sales in just 6 months!

Change your language

This is a good one as it is a subtle way of reinforcing policies and procedures without employees even knowing. Start using the new reinforcements in your language. Using the previous example, about implementing a new policy around lateness, start saying little things in meetings or conversations to convey your frustration with lateness. E.g.”This is why it’s so important to always show up on time” or “I’ve always thought of lateness as being very rude.” If you consistently do this staff will always remember the importance of your new policies.

Get decorative

Make funny quotes out of your policies and procedures and turn them into decorations. You can frame quotes, paint them on the walls, write them on mirrors, or take photos of staff members with cartoon speech bubbles to stick around the workplace. With Oplift Engage you can create digital banners which show up on the dashboard, this means you can easily create new quotes whenever you want. They are also clickable which means each banner quote can link to the related policy or procedure!

Make them memorable

Instead of writing a long boring document, turn it into something fun. Turn it into rhyme or a poem that employees will be more likely to remember.

Create buzzwords out of what you are trying to say, for example, you have created a new policy around bag checking as you have had a lot of theft in your workplace. You could use the word STEAL.

STEAL

Stop any staff member walking out the door if their bag hasn’t been checked.

Tell a senior member of staff if you see anything suspicious.

Evaluate the situation and use your own judgement.

Always keep a record of the bag checks which you carry out.

Look out for empty boxes, bin bags which aren’t clear (could be hiding evidence), new shoes/products which employees have.

Turn your policies or procedures into how-to guides, this will make staff envisage how they will be carried out rather than reading what they are. E.g. a lateness policy could have a how-to guide around not being late in the morning. Oplift Engage enables you to easily break down long articles into how-to guides for extra easy reading.